Key Challenges

Outcomes

Transformed IT into business enabler, Reduced IT operating expenses, Positioned company for the future growth

Challenges

Infrastructure Limits Business Initiatives

Innovative products combined with superior quality: that is what Vollrath Company brings to the table for the restaurant industry. The company specializes in supplying commercial kitchens worldwide with everything from advanced food preparation appliances to cookware and cleaning systems. But as any successful company knows, offering such outstanding quality will ultimately lead to tremendous growth. And while Vollrath was experiencing remarkable success as a company, its IT was struggling to keep up, ultimately wasting 80 percent of its time battling technical emergencies within its failing infrastructure.

To enable it to continue to grow and better serve its customers, Vollrath Company began the search for a new storage infrastructure.

Our Approach

EMC Account Manager Brian Vogler, worked with John Sharp, Vollrath Company IT Manager, to choose and implement the new VCE Vblock infrastructure. The Vblock includes VMware vSphere virtualization, Cisco servers, and the EMC XtremIO all-flash array. The company also deployed EMC data protection solutions.

“Every day used to be a firefight. Since bringing in EMC and VCE, our system admins operate more as business analysts. They work on improving group policy and finding ways to make things more efficient.”

Outcomes

Transformed IT into business enabler

Vblock enabled Vollrath IT to transform from reactive to proactive, allowing the company to shift its focus away from IT firedrills. The new IT has helped Vollrath launch several digital initiatives. With XtremIO performance and reliability and VMware scalability, the company can integrate new companies in a week.

Reduced IT operating expenses

Virtualization provided by the new infrastructure has reduced the number of physical machines to six blades, significantly lessening the data center footprint and power and cooling costs. The new infrastructure requires fewer administrators so staff can be deployed to strategic business initiatives.

Positioned company for future growth

Vblock will enable Vollrath to continue to handle growth and position it to create new databases, data warehouses, and data lakes, which the company can mine for strategic information. As a result, the company can gain more from its existing and future data.